Two Supreme Court justices who
disagreed with Friday’s majority ruling upholding the election of Gboyega
Oyetola as Osun State governor, have accused the Independent National Electoral
Commission of rigging the polls.

One of the dissenting judges,
Kumai Akaas, accused INEC of rigging the polls during the rerun.

The second judge, Paul Galinje,
said INEC had no cogent reason to have conducted a rerun in the first place.

He said “the decision of the
commission to have pronounced that election inconclusive meant that INEC had
something up it sleeves.”

The blistering rebuke of the
electoral body came at the Supreme Court’s ruling on the election dispute
brought by Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party.

The two judges from a
seven-member panel, disagreed with a majority ruling upholding the September
2018 election in Mr Oyetola’s favour.

How the election happened

Mr Adeleke filed a petition at
the election tribunal to challenge the victory of Mr Oyetola of the APC.

The main election was held on
September 22 while a supplementary election was held on September 27 in seven
polling units.

The electoral commission, INEC,
declared Mr Oyetola winner of the election after the supplementary poll. Mr
Adeleke led after the first round of polling.

Mr Adeleke, who said he polled
the highest number of votes in the election overall, asked the tribunal to
cancel the victory of Mr Oyetola and declare him the winner of the election.

The Osun tribunal ruled in Mr
Adeleke’s favour and declared him the winner of the election. In a split
judgment of two to one, the tribunal ruled that INEC was wrong to have ordered
a rerun election. It nullified the rerun.

The court also ruled that INEC
did not comply with its guidelines on results from 17 polling units.

The tribunal then deducted the
results of both parties from the declared total of votes in the affected 17
polling units.

According to the tribunal, the
PDP won the election with 254,698 votes, while the APC came second with 253,452
votes.

The tribunal also said that the
PDP would still have won the poll even if it had opted to validate the
supplementary election.

But in a contrary opinion in May,
the Court of Appeal ruled that “the tribunal was in patent error when it set
aside the rerun.”

The court, which had also
delivered its verdict in a split decision of four to one, ruled that the judge
who issued the majority decision at the tribunal, Peter Obiora, was absent on
February 6, 2019, when a major discussion on the issue of none-compliance was
tabled before the tribunal; and could therefore not have viewed the issue
squarely.

Dissatisfied, Mr Adeleke
challenged the decision at the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court ruling and
disagreement

The Supreme Court’s effective
ruling, read by Bode Rhodes-Vivour, affirmed the decision of the Court of
Appeal.

The court said Mr Obiora was
evidently absent on February 6 based on the documents before it.

It said the failure of Mr Obiora
to be present on that day meant that the tribunal lacked the authorities to
have given any judgment on the matter.

In disagreeing, however, Justices
Akaas and Galinje said although the absence of Mr Obiora should result in the
nullification of the judgement of the election tribunal, “the only way to
affirm that was by producing the original court records.”

They said the “the actual record
of the tribunal was not before the court of appeal.”

“The onus is on the APC to have
proven that Obiora did not sit on February, 6. They should have sworn an
affidavit,” the judges said.

They also held that it has been
the precedence of the Supreme Court that judges do not have to sign the
certified true copies of the judgement.